It’s not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China’s problems are not just China’s problems – they’re human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.
AI WEIWEII spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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The United States is a melting pot. Like John F. Kennedy said, it’s a nation of immigrants. But Donald Trump wants to build a fence that clearly makes the statement: “You and I are divided.
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We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet.
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I’m totally independent. I don’t bear any responsibility to any system.
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I never think any place is better than others.
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And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would’ve lost the ground to win.
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What is important is that we actively express our thoughts and wishes, in every realm that we can access.
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It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
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Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I’ll find my way – or get totally lost.
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The whole Chinese system – not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society – is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information.
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They’ve become part of a conspiracy, collaborators of the crime, which is lying to the general public and trying to hide the kind of criminal acts happening in many cases.
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Everyone of us is a potential convict.
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The society was so different [in China] – it was a feudalistic society. It didn’t come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
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The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society’s level of civilization.
AI WEIWEI